Among the organized crime families in the metropolitan area, the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante clan is the only one that was never given a seat on the Mafia's ruling commission.

Testimony from a number of former mob insiders has demonstrated the wisdom of that decision.

A trial of alleged DeCavalcante crime family members under way in federal court in New York has provided a rare glimpse into the world of New Jersey's only homegrown organized crime clan, where moments of shocking brutality mix regularly with bumbling blunders worthy of a "Three Stooges" comedy.

Vincent "Vinnie Ocean" Palermo, a one-time fishmonger who served as acting boss of the family, this week has joined a steady stream of Mafia turncoats who have made it clear why the DeCavalcantes are regarded as something less than the elite of the criminal underworld.

There was the phone fiasco: Palermo's men were given a supply of free cell phones - unaware that the phones were actually supplied by the FBI, which used them to tap the mobsters' conversations.

Then there was Palermo's tale of his own initiation into the underworld fraternity:

"It was late at night," he said. "It's always late at night."

He described how he was driven by his father-in-law to a home in Elizabeth, where family patriarch Simone Rizzo "Sam the Plumber" DeCavalcante, underboss John Riggi and others were waiting.

It was DeCavalcante, he said, who explained why he was there: "We're going to make you part of the family."

They outlined the rules of the criminal fraternity, "and when it was all over, they put out a lot of food, cold cuts, and we all just ate."

It was only later that he discovered that the bosses had been so eager to chow down that they had messed up the ceremony so badly he had to have it repeated.

According to Palermo, DeCavalcante and the others had forgotten the key part of the initiation - the oath of allegiance in which a candidate's trigger finger is pricked, his blood is dropped on the picture of a saint, and the picture is burned in his hand as the vows of loyalty are spoken.

But to Palermo, who rose to the top of the underworld organization through a pattern of ruthless violence that included killing his own uncle, it became clear those vows had little lasting impact. Shortly after he was arrested in 1999, he contacted federal authorities and agreed to turn "rat" in return for leniency.

This week, Palermo identified dozens of his former Mafia cohorts, linking them to a litany of criminal activity ranging from murder to loansharking and extortion.

There was "Bernard," who "cleaned up after a couple of murders," and characters with names such as "Frank the Painter," and "Frankie the Beast," as well as "Anthony Soft-shoes."

Not all of them, however, are still among the living.

There was Jimmy Rotondo - "He was going to get promoted to underboss, but he got killed a few days before - he got shot"; there was "Fat Lou, we used to call him - he got murdered"; and several others that "got murdered," too.

Palermo said he knew most of them only by their first names because "many, many years ago, I was taught by Sam the Plumber not to remember last names."

When Palermo, 57, a stocky man with dark hair, glasses, a neatly trimmed beard, came to court dressed in a fashionable brown suit, he showed no emotion as he admitted that he had committed four murders, including the killing of former Staten Island Advance city editor Frederick Weiss: "I shot him twice in the head."

That killing, he said, was a good career move. "Being I shot Weiss," he said, "they made me a captain."

He also admitted he had ordered nine more killings, but said, "I called them all off except two. . . . I got locked up - I didn't have a chance."

But Palermo, who said his "legitimate" businesses ranged from a fish store to restaurants, "gentlemen's clubs" and a New Jersey car dealership, disclosed that when it came to his personal finances, he was something of a loser.

There was the time he and his wife were going on vacation, and he decided to hide the family jewelry - some $700,000 worth - by sticking them in the bottom of a garbage can and covered with a bag of garbage.

But, he said, unknown to him, "my wife took the garbage out for the first time in 20 years and that was the end of the jewelry."

Palermo said he tried to strong-arm the garbage men into admitting they found it, but that one of the guys he had recruited for muscle, instead "ran upstairs and hid in the bedroom until it was over."

Then there was the time he put a .357-caliber Magnum to the head of a boat mechanic and forced him admit he to had taken Palermo's boat out and ruined the motor.

"I was so mad, I bit his nose," Palermo recalled.

The killing of his uncle, however, was part of a family dispute in which the uncle thought Palermo's mother had cheated him out of his share from their parents' house.

"It was a Sunday," he said, "my brother came to my house. . . . He said we need to kill Uncle John."